Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Bowing the head

As Augustinus points out in a comment on the last post, bishop Roche`s statement today does not just mention the Hebrew Tetragrammaton for the Divine Name. It goes on to speak about a Catholic practice that is largely falling out of use. Here is the passage:

It is part of our Catholic tradition that we offer reverence not just with the words on our lips but through actions such as a bow of the head. This bow is made whenever the Holy Trinity are named together, for example, in a doxology, and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saint in whose honour Mass is being celebrated. Though the document from the Holy See is concerned with language and translation it provides an opportunity to remind ourselves of the reverence owed to the name of God both in worship and in daily life

Through all my time in seminary I used to bow my head at the names of the Trinity in the doxology. I expect that that probably gave me another black mark. This and the rubric to bow the head at the Name of Jesus, Mary or the Saint of the day was rubric 234 of General Instruction of the Roman Missal of 1969. I`m sure it is in the revised instruction too. Good to see it mentioned again by the English bishops. I`ll draw attention to it in the parish bulletin this weekend.

One of the things that has most struck me when visiting Benedictine monasteries is the devout bowing of the head for the Trinitarian doxologies at the end of psalms and hymns. I wish the practice of bowing the head at appropriate monets was still observed at parish masses.

By the way, congratulations, father, on the twentieth anniversary of your ordination, which you mentioned on Madame Evangelista's blog.

Golly Fr. Brown! I would have thought for doing that you would have been sent off to have a chat with some sister who had been released from her convent to specialise in psychodynamic counselling, wearing a smart two-piece and a blue rinse!

Truly, I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church impressed me.

St Augustine: Contra epistolam Manichaei 5.6

“The usus antiquior should be a standard element of the cultural capital of all Latin Rite Catholics since it so effectively resists secularism and satisfies the post-modern hunger for coherent order, beauty and an experience of self-transcendence.”